Demers hurt so Burns returning to blue line tonight, Couture on that Datsyuk deke and more

SAN JOSE – Brent Burns will be back on the blue line tonight – not by design but because Jason Demers turns out to be sidelined by a hard hit he took in the first period of Thursday night’s 2-0 win over Detroit.

Burns, of course, has had a terrific nine games at forward with five goals and five assists. And Coach Todd McLellan indicated Burns will still see some shifts up front. But because a so-far-unidentified call-up from Worcester won’t be here soon enough to play against the Phoenix Coyotes, Burns goes back to the blue line.

“He spent the majority of his seven or eight years back there. I’m assuming it’s probably easier for him to go back then it is to go up,” McLellan said. “And that doesn’t mean we’ll use him back there all night. He’ll allow us to have six there tonight and we may even play him up front for a while.”

McLellan was practically silent on the injury to Demers.

“He’s not going to play tonight and he’s not feeling good today,” the coach repeated twice when asked for specifics.

But a first-period hit by Red Wing center Cory Emmerton caught Demers on the jaw, and though he continued to play, it apparently did some damage. The fact McLellan wouldn’t go into details suggest the possibility of a concussion as those are often the injuries NHL teams are most reluctant to discuss.

Dan Boyle said he got a good look at the hit during the game and thought it was something the league might review.

“I think the way they’re calling it, it’s something that needs to be looked at,” Boyle said. “But that’s a hockey play. His head was low. Where else was he going to hit a guy?”

“Reputation has a lot to do with it. Is his intent really to hurt Jason there? Knowing the player, I don’t think so. But the definition of what they’re calling is hit to the head,” Boyle said before alluding back to a sucker punch he took from Corey Perry on Wednesday night. “A couple days ago, I get suckered to the head and it’s not even talked about. We’ve got to clear up the definitions I guess.”

Brad Stuart said he was on the ice when the hit occurred and only caught it on the periphery. But he seconded the notion that Emmerton, a former teammate, wasn’t head-hunting.

“When I heard it was him I was pretty surprised actually,” Stuart said. “He’s not the type of player who’s going to lay somebody out like that, but apparently he did.”

*****Adam Burish – a healthy scratch the last two games – skated in Burns’s spot on a top line with Joe Thornton and Marty Havlat in the morning skate.

The idea was to obviously keep the other three lines intact as the Sharks have been generating more offense lately. But McLellan said he wasn’t locked into startng the game the way things looked this morning.

“Based on Demers, the way he felt this morning, it was a last-minute shuffle,” McLellan said. “We’ll spend some time thinking about our lines and how we want to play them. You can anticipate we go that way, but it might not be that way.”

As far as Burish’s recent play that earned him a spot on the bench, here’s what the coach had to say:

“Adam and I talked about his play and the impact he has on the game and on our team. He’s had some very good games for us throughout the year. We just think there’s more in certain areas that he can bring. We had a good talk and I think he’ll get an opportunity to play and show us.”

****Logan Couture’s gotten a lot of unwanted attention the last two days after he ended up falling on his backside trying to defend against Pavel Datsyuk in the first period of Thursday night’s game. But he’s taken it in stride, even joking about it on Twitter:

(If that link doesn’t work, here’s another you can try: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZeilmWeM20)

It was indeed Couture’s 24th birthday. This morning I gave him a chance to share blame for that fall with a rut in the ice. Nope, he said, it was all Datsyuk.

“I don’t know what I was doing, if I was crossing over or looking at the puck,” Couture said. “He’s just too good.
I was defending him all night so it wasn’t much fun. He’s a special player. He’s tough to defend when he gets like that, when he gets space.”

****The Ryane Clowe trade watch continues. The first thing a few of us were looking for this morning was his presence on the ice confirming no overnight deal had been made. Clowe was one of the last to appear from the locker room.

“I’m still here, bud,” he said when I mentioned the above to him.

Reminder that the deadline is noon PDT on Wednesday.

David Pollak

David Pollak has been following the NHL forever and at the Mercury News as an editor or reporter since 1987. For almost a decade he wrote about the Sharks as the paper's Fan in the Stands before joining the sports department in 2001. He became the Sharks beat writer before the 2007-08 season and began this blog at that time. You can also follow him on Twitter at @PollakOnSharks.